Fajã d'Água

Overview

Fajã d’Água is a small fishing and farming village on the west coast of Brava, strung along the shore of a bay at the mouth of a valley, with cliffs rising directly behind the houses. It sits at about 7 m above sea level, roughly 4 km west of the island capital Vila Nova Sintra, and the only settlement level population figure we could find is 126, recorded by Wikidata without a census year attached to it. People here live from fishing and from maize, beans, bananas and papayas grown on the valley floor and the terraces above it.

The bay is the reason people come. One British Cape Verde guide calls it probably the prettiest bay in the whole country, and describes the coast either side of it as steep cliff. A Dutch guide to the island puts it more plainly: there is little to do in the village, and the recommendation is to look at the bay or to sit still. That is an honest summary. Brava has no resorts, no organised excursions and no taxis, and Fajã d’Água is the quiet end of an already quiet island.

It is also the older half of Brava’s relationship with the sea: the island’s main harbour until Furna took over in 1843, and the bay where American whaling ships anchored and signed on Bravan crew. For the island context see Brava, and for the archipelago as a whole the Cape Verde guide.

History

The place is old enough to appear on eighteenth century charts. The point was marked as Faciend de Agoa on Jacques-Nicolas Bellin’s 1747 map of the Cape Verde islands. For most of the period after that it was Brava’s principal harbour, and it kept that role until 1843, when the present port at Furna on the east coast was founded and the shipping moved there. Today Fajã d’Água’s harbour is used only for fishing.

The whalers

From the end of the eighteenth century, whaling ships out of North America worked the waters around the Azores and Cape Verde, and they used Brava’s two harbours, Fajã de Água and Furna, to take on supplies and drinking water. They hired men from Brava as crew, and a number of those men settled around the Massachusetts whaling port of New Bedford. Whaling was the island’s main industry for more than a century before agriculture took over.

The scale claimed for this bay varies by source. The Cape Verde travel writers Pitt Reitmaier and Lucete Fortes say the Cape Verdean diaspora began at Fajã d’Água in the early nineteenth century, with up to a hundred whaling ships a year turning up off the beach to hire fisher boys already used to handling small rowing boats in the open Atlantic. Another guide credits that contact with Brava carrying more American influence than any other island in the archipelago. We could not check the hundred ships a year figure against a primary source, so treat it as the guidebook’s number rather than a count.

The Matilde

Opposite the small church at the northern end of the main street stands a monument to the emigrants, put up in 1993. It commemorates the sailing ship Matilde, which left Fajã d’Água for America on 21 August 1943 and was lost in the Atlantic with 51 people aboard. Almost every family in the village lost a relative. The memorial is mapped at the north end of the village, a few steps from the chapel.

The airstrip

Brava’s one attempt at an airport was built beside this village. Esperadinha opened in 1992 with a paved runway and connected Brava to Fogo and Santiago, and it closed in 2004 because of persistent strong winds that made landing dangerous. It has never reopened, and everyone reaching Brava now does so by sea.

Visiting

Getting here

There is no ticket, no gate and no opening time: this is a village, and you walk or drive into it. The road down from Vila Nova Sintra is narrow with hairpin bends, and the distance is about 4 km.

Transport on Brava is the aluguer, the shared minibus used across Cape Verde. There is no fixed schedule: they run when they have enough passengers, and there are no taxis and no car hire firms on the island. In practice their movement follows the boats: ferries dock at Furna on the east coast, aluguers meet them for the 3 km climb up to Vila Nova Sintra, and the run west to Fajã d’Água is arranged from the town, with hiring a whole vehicle as the fallback when nothing is filling up. Agree the ride back before you settle in.

Walking down and walking up

The better arrival is on foot. The descent from the plateau follows cobbled paths through fields and past settlements that have been left empty, and the walk is the point rather than the means. Going the other way, out of the village and up the valley of the Ribeira do Fajã d’Água, there is a walking track to the pilgrimage church at Nossa Senhora do Monte in the middle of the island.

Read the numbers before committing to that one. Nossa Senhora do Monte sits at about 650 m and is roughly 2 km from the bay in a straight line, so the climb is the better part of 650 m in very little horizontal distance. The village up there has the pilgrimage church, a few bars and shops on its main street, and aluguers to Vila Nova Sintra several times a day, which makes it a workable one way walk with a ride at the far end.

The natural pool

A natural swimming pool lies about a kilometre south of the village, mapped on the shoreline below the airstrip. Swimming is possible when the wind is not too strong and the waves are not too high, which is a real condition rather than a formality on this coast, and guides describing it as somewhere you can swim safely are not promising supervision: there is none. We could not verify a local name for the pool from any source we could reach, so we have not given one. It is volcanic rock underfoot rather than sand, so bring something to wear on your feet.

Further south again is Porto do Portete, a dark sand beach that Wikipedia describes as not easily accessible; one island guide calls it the only black sand beach on Brava.

The runway by the sea

About 1.7 km south west of the village, at the far end of the road, is the abandoned Esperadinha airstrip: a single asphalt runway numbered 05 and 23, 576 m long, laid on the flat shelf between the cliffs and the water. That length, plus the winds funnelling round the island, is why it lasted twelve years. It is now a strip of tarmac ending at the Atlantic, apron and taxiway still mapped alongside it, and walking out along it is the closest thing this village has to a sight.

The bay itself is best seen from the road above the village on the way in, where the whole crescent and the cliffs behind it line up at once.

Tips

Bring what you need, and cash

Nothing in the village is set up for visitors. The island’s bank and pharmacy are up in Vila Nova Sintra, so draw money and buy anything medical before you come down. Carry water for any walking: the coast here is arid, and the shade is in the valley rather than on the paths.

Order food in advance

Eating options across Brava are limited, and the standard local practice is to book a meal a day ahead, or first thing in the morning, so the kitchen can shop for it; guesthouses will usually feed non-residents on the same terms. A bar and two or three guesthouses are mapped here, one of them renting self-catering apartments, but we could not verify current prices or opening status for any of them, so contact them before you travel rather than arriving and hoping.

Build slack into the ferry

The single most useful piece of advice about Brava applies doubly to a day spent on its far side. Ferries are subject to wind, weather and sea, delays of a day or two happen, and the long standing local advice is never to schedule Brava at the end of a trip: at the start, coming back a day or two late costs you nothing. Confirm departure times locally rather than trusting a schedule found online.

Language and manners

Portuguese is the official language and Cape Verdean Creole, Kriolu, is what is spoken day to day; English goes a long way on the tourist islands and much less far here. Fajã d’Água is roughly a hundred people living in a place other people photograph, so greet people, ask before pointing a camera at anyone, and keep out of the cultivated ground on the valley floor. If you want more of the island first, start with the Brava guide.